I followed these instructions about 9 months ago to create a dual boot Win 8 / OpenSuse 13.2 on my HP i7 6GB notebook:
http://tweakhound.com/2014/11/13/dual-boot-opensuse-13-2-and-windows-8-1-uefi/
It was a wonderful success, and applied the same thing to my wife’s new HP Win 8 desktop with great success.
I say it is a strange boot problem because I follow the same steps and the process no longer works.
I spent those months getting used to (And loving) OpenSuse and it became very buggy… I suspect because I installed/uninstalled countless programs to try various linux software packages.
Since it was buggy and I had a list of mus-have Linux distributions (And Windows was getting weird again) I wanted to restore my dual-boot for a fresh entire system.
- I ran all my Windows 8 restore disks. 9 Hours later my computer was factory restored to Windows 8 with all necessary MS updates installed.
- I verified my BIOS safeboot is still set to off. I verified the boot was still set to Legacy (Support Vista, XP etc)
- I followed the instructions shown in the website I linked above:
a. Using Windows partition manager, I shrunk the NTFS to create about 400gb free space.
b. Boot up to the OpenSuse 13.2 setup disk.
c. Used default KDE settings and choose “Create partition setup”
d. I choose “Custom partitioning”
e. I created a 3gb swap partition
f. I created a ext4 partition for the file system, set FSTAB to “No Access Time”
g. I set the EFI boot to Mount and Boot/EFI
h. Install OpenSuse 13.2 (KDE)
I. Reboot. Windows automatically boots, no grub which I expected.
J. Opened Windows terminal in elevated status and changed to: bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\opensuse\shim.efi
K. Reboot.
But now it only boots to Windows and I don’t get the Grub menu.
Actually, I tried this process last month but failed with the same issue. I experimented with various things at the time but couldn’t get the dual-boot to work again and ended up with a single boot OpenSuse machine.
I used an old Vista machine for my 2 Windows programs but I am having too many problems with them in Vista. So I am trying for a dual-boot again.
As it is, I have Opensuse installed but my notebook only boots straight to Windows (Yuk). I left “Safeboot support” enabled in the OpenSuse installation however I have it turned off in Bios. I am not sure if that has any consequence, but it is something I tried toggling in my restore experiments last month.
Any ideas?
I have a list of the Linux must-have programs I’ve vetted so I won’t need to experiment with installing/uninstalling countless distributions again.
Thanks in advance.
Did you boot the install disk in EFI mode??
I suspect you did not since you should not have had to manually set /boot/efi
You need to use grub2-efi as a boot loader
If you boot the installer in EFI mode (normally F12 for boot selection menu at machine boot screen) then the /boot/efi should be set and the grub2-efi should be selected.
Also you may need to deal with secure boot if turned on in the UEFI If it is you most select secure boot checkbox. Note it does not hurt to select this even if secure boot is off
Thank you for the reply gogalthorp.
I have partial success.
I used Windows partition manager to delete my OpenSuse partitions to start over.
I disregarded the instructions (that worked before) mentioned in my previous post.
You had mentioned it needs to use the grub2-efi boot loader. Using the default KDE install, I noticed the automatic configuration uses grub2-efi as boot loader so I just went with the automatic suggestion. Here’s part of the install summary:
**Booting:
Boot Loader Type: GRUB2-EFI
Enable Secure Boot: true
If I boot my PC then I don’t get GRUB but straight to Windows.
However I can press F9 after reset to get the boot menu with the choices:
OS boot manager
OS boot manager
opensuse-secureboot (TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100)
Boot From EFI File
I can not change the order of the arrangement (At least not an obvious way). I press the arrows down to select opensuse-secure boot and I get the grub menu and I choose either OpenSuse or Windows.
I use F10 to go into the BIOS system configuration. The settings are:
Legacy support is disabled (UEFI enabled).
Secure Boot is disabled.
UEFI Boot Order selections are:
Internal CD/DVD ROM Drive
USB CD/ROM Drive
USB Diskette on Key/USB Hard Disk
Network Adapter
OS Boot Manager
So now I can get the GRUB menu but only if I press F9 first and select opensuse-secure boot.
It doesn’t seem to make any difference if Legacy boot is enabled or disabled.
I feel that I am so close, any suggestions?
Thanks again. 
I’m probably confused.
Is this a Toshiba or is this an HP with a Toshiba disk?
I’ll assume HP for the moment.
I do not have any personal experience with HP. But I understand that, at least in some of the newer HP systems, there is a BIOS setting for “customized boot”. If you can find that setting, it will allow you to change the boot order.
Failing that, you might be stuck with using F9 on every boot.
Hi all, this is a HP Envy notebook.
Thanks for the help. I’ll use my F9 button on bootup.
I appreciate the assistance!
Might try efibootmgr program it maybe able to change the order. But if you can’t from the BIOS itself it may not work from the OS either
man efibootmger
for instructions